


even as a dream

by izzylizardborn



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Dreams, Dreamsharing, M/M, Post-The Raven King, The Raven King Spoilers, just a little extra closure for these kids, sorta?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-30
Updated: 2016-12-30
Packaged: 2018-09-13 10:17:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9119272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/izzylizardborn/pseuds/izzylizardborn
Summary: When Noah appeared in his dream one night, Ronan really shouldn’t have been surprised.





	

**Author's Note:**

> this is a revision of an old fic, originally requested by [dundee998](http://gaybluesargent.tumblr.com/post/144675552356/id-like-to-see-if-noah-ever-said-goodbye-to)! 
> 
> i've changed some stuff around, so even if you've read it before, i hope you'll still enjoy it! 
> 
> title taken from [this quote](http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1030335-come-back-even-as-a-shadow-even-as-a-dream):  
>  _"Come back! Even as a shadow,_  
>  _even as a dream._ "

Ronan had known for a while now that his dreams existed even before he brought them to life.

Opal existed back when she was Orphan Girl, and even back before that, when she was a nameless character in reoccurring dreams. Cabeswater, too, existed back before it became a place he could explore with his friends. Certainly, the things that lived inside his head weren’t real like most other things were real, but they _existed_ , somehow, somewhere.

Which meant that Ronan’s magic wasn’t the ability to make  _something_  out of  _nothing_. Ronan’s magic was to take something that existed in one place – an odd and exclusive and pliable place, but a place nonetheless – and move it to another.

Ronan had also come to learn that, under the right circumstances, that place could be entered. First Kavinsky, with his thieving and his magic pills. Then Adam, scrying in with nothing but determination and Cabeswater magic. Not dream versions of Kavinsky and Adam, not versions he had crafted himself, but their real selves, making memories that they brought back when they woke up.

So, when Noah appeared in his dream one night, Ronan really shouldn’t have been surprised. 

Before Noah, though, Ronan was alone in a skate park. It was a bright summer day, and the sun reflected off the bleached concrete, washing everything white and light. Music hummed, a subtle electronic pulse from the horizon, too far away for Ronan to distinguish any specific word or tune. The place would’ve been surreal even if Ronan didn’t know he was asleep. The dramatic dips and valleys, the person-sized tubes, the cartoonish graffiti - everything about it begged for motion and movement and life, but Ronan and the sun were the only inhabitants. 

Since there was no one else there to do it, Ronan took the liberty of making the place feel alive. He explored, jumping down into dips and hiking up ramps, laying his hands against the hot concrete and trying to make out the indecipherable messages left in spray paint. 

Although Noah was nowhere in sight, Ronan knew this must’ve had something to do with him. He had never been to a skate park before – no way he could’ve have dreamt up all these details on secondhand knowledge alone. 

There was something unsettling about existing in the abstract of Noah’s mind, knowing full well that Noah was dead. 

But then again, death wasn’t what it used to be. 

Just as Ronan started to wonder if he was missing something, the birds came. First, they were just shadows, high against the sun; then there were more, and more, turning from silhouettes to sheets, swooping and soaring in time. 

At first, he thought they were crows. But as they got closer, he could see they were ravens, of a million different sizes and a million different colors. 

They raced toward him, quiet but for the beating of their wings, and Ronan thought he ought to be afraid. But as they encircled him, making him the eye of the storm and blotting out the sun, he knew they wouldn’t hurt him. The ravens didn’t care about him. Their path lay somewhere passed him, above him, beyond him. He was nothing but a pit-stop. 

For a moment or a minute or longer than that – time wasn’t right, in dreams or ever – the impossible ravens swirled around him. And when they did leave, they left suddenly; and when Ronan’s eyes adjusted once more, Noah was rolling by on a skateboard and a trill of laughter.

The recognition was there, of course, but Noah looked  _wrong_. He was moving wrong, and laughing wrong, and wearing the wrong clothes, and there was something wrong with his face–

No. Noah looked  _right_.

All at once, every memory of Noah ran alongside the image in front of him now. Noah had been wrong before, when he’d been imprisoned in his Aglionby sweater, when half his face had been marked with a smudge. Ronan hadn’t ever realized how much Noah’s caved-in cheek had interfered with his smile. 

But now, looking at the beaming boy in front of him, it was impossible to believe he’d ever thought that the Noah he’d known had been right.

Just like he couldn’t have dreamt this skate park from the bits of knowledge he had, he couldn’t have dreamt this Noah from the Noah he knew.

“Ronan!” Noah greeted, zipping toward him, launching himself off the skateboard and letting it roll right by as he stumbled into Ronan for a hug.

“Noah,” Ronan said, not able to steel his voice against the shock and confusion and overwhelm and longing that suddenly fought up his throat. He put his arms around Noah and was shocked by the warmth of him.

Noah wasn’t cold.

“You’ve got to try skateboarding, Ronan,” Noah said, hopping free of Ronan’s embrace to go chase after his board, which had catapulted itself down a ramp. “It’s like driving fast, but without the car and not as fast. Well, that makes it sound lame, but it’s great! You’d love it.”

Right then, Ronan couldn’t consider whether or not he’d love skateboarding. He couldn’t consider anything except how alive Noah had been when he’d hugged him. “What the  _fuck_ , Noah?” he asked, sounding angrier than he meant to, as though it was Noah he was mad at.

He knew it wasn’t, though, and Noah knew it, too.

This Noah, in his baggy khaki shorts and expensive sneakers and Blink-182 cap (turned backwards despite the fact that he was squinting into the sun), was a Noah he’d never get to know. It was a Noah that Whelk had stolen, from the world and from Noah himself.

Ronan knew he probably never would’ve met Noah if he hadn’t been killed. He knew himself and Gansey probably would’ve died young, too, without Noah’s ghostly intervention time and time again. He knew he loved Noah, even though the Noah he’d known was just a small piece of who he was before. But at the moment, all he cared about was Noah himself – Noah, as a boy who deserved so much  _more_.

“It’s okay, Ronan,” Noah said, jumping back on his skateboard and riding right up to Ronan’s side, steadying himself on Ronan’s bicep. When Noah smiled at him like that, with his hand clammy against Ronan’s skin, Ronan almost believed him. “I’m okay.”

Ronan balked as anger ignited the ball of complicated feelings in his chest. “You’re not okay. You were  _murdered_  and  _dead_ , and now you’re  _gone_.”

“I’m okay,” Noah repeated, broad smile softening into something Ronan actually recognized. “I’m remembered.”

And just like that, Ronan’s anger was extinguished; grief soaked it into nothing.

Ronan remembered Noah every time he sped down the road in the middle of the night. He remembered Noah every time he saw a snowglobe. Every time he heard music Noah might’ve liked. Every time he walked past Noah’s room, which somehow seemed emptier than before even though it hadn’t technically changed at all. Every time he opened the window in his room at Monmouth, every time he drove past the cemetery where they’d grave-robbed Noah’s bones, every time someone mentioned schnapps, or ghosts, or glitter. 

There wasn’t a day that he didn’t miss Noah.

Because he loved him, remembering him hurt like hell. But, because he loved him, he had no choice.

That was the least he could do for his friend.

Ronan found it in himself to say, “Damn right you are.”

Noah smiled widely again, hopping off his skateboard and kicking it upright. “Thanks, Ronan,” he said. His voice was the one thing that death hadn’t changed, and if Ronan shut his eyes, nothing would be different. But he couldn’t bear to. “You’re my best friend, you know that?” he continued. “You and Gansey and Adam and Blue, you’re all my best friends. Meeting you guys and helping you guys – it was worth it.” He stooped to pick up his skateboard, holding it to his chest for a moment and then handing it to Ronan. “You’ve got to try skating, dude. Seriously. I think you’d like it.” 

The dream dissolved, Noah’s brilliant smile fading into the brilliant light of the sun.

When Ronan woke up, he woke up with Noah’s skateboard clutched in his arms. With the softest squeak, the wheels still spun.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading and i hope you enjoyed it!!
> 
> come cry about the raven kids with me on tumblr at @[gaybluesargent](http://gaybluesargent.tumblr.com/)!  
> [(this fic is rebloggable here!)](http://gaybluesargent.tumblr.com/post/155164399691/even-as-a-dream)
> 
> any comments or feedback are always super appreciated!! :^) thank you again!


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